Lawrence Block - Masters of Noir - Volume 1

“Give me a chance, Tony.”

“There isn’t any chance.”

“I don’t want to die, Tony. I don’t want you to die. If we have to kill him, let it be later. Let it be when the time’s exactly right. Oh, Tony, give me a chance to save us.”

Her golden flesh burned through the white mist, but I was suddenly spent and impotent, and I turned and went away to my own room and lay down in the darkness.

After a while, I heard the convertible come to life below my window and move off down the drive.

I kept on lying there in the darkness.

There was no warmth in the sun, and the wind blowing in across the lake was very cold. The timber stood naked against the sky above its fallen leaves.

In her room, Cindy was packing. I went in and closed the door and stood leaning against it.

“Going somewhere, Cindy?”

“Yes. Back to town. Summer’s over, and it’s getting cold, and it’s time to go back.”

“Going alone, Cindy?”

“Please, Tony. We’ve been over it all so often. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” I said. “Like you said a long time ago, you’re saving us. Two months ago, Cindy. A long time.”

She kept going back and forth between the closet and her bag, not looking at me. She was wearing brown velvet pajamas with six inches of golden skin between the pants and the top, and the effect of the brown velvet and the golden skin was a matter of shading that made my heart ache.

“You’re going with Evan. Evan, the pretty blackmailer.”

“It’s for us, Tony. For you and me.”

“I know. That’s what I keep telling myself. She’s making a big sacrifice, I keep telling myself. But now maybe it’s time to let Evan Lane start sacrificing. Maybe it’s time now to let him make the big sacrifice for us, the same way Grandfather made it.”

She stopped halfway to the bag and turned toward me, holding in her hands a scarlet cashmere sweater that was like a great soft splash of blood against the brown velvet.

“He’s got us, Tony. However much we hate him, he’s got us, and you know it.”

“I should’ve killed him the first night.”

“He’ll get tired of it pretty soon, Tony. I know he will. Then it’ll be you and me again.”

“Sure. You and me and Acapulco. You and me and the hot nights.”

“It will, Tony. It will.”

I went over to her fast and took a handful of her golden hair. I pulled her head back hard until her slender throat was a tight arch and her lips were pulled apart.

“Is that the truth, Cindy?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Say it. Say it’s the truth and the whole truth, so help you God.”

“It is, Tony. It’s the truth and the whole truth, so help me God.”

I let go of her hair, and her head came forward and down until her mouth was warm and alive on the base of my neck, and her arms came up around me.

“I love you, Cindy. I’ve murdered for you, and I’d die for you, and there’s no place to go without you but hell.”

“It won’t be long now, Tony,” she whispered. “Not long now.”

Then I went out of her room and downstairs. From a desk in the den behind the living room, I got a .38 calibre revolver and put it in the pocket of my tweed jacket. Outside, I angled down through the naked timber to the artificial beach and turned right along the shore.

The grass around the lake was dying, but it was still long and tough and hard to walk in, and in spite of the chill, the shirt under my jacket was soon wet with sweat. It was a small lake, but it took me well over an hour to walk around it to Evan Lane’s lodge.

The lodge sat among the trees. I went up the slope and across the front veranda to the door and knocked, but there was no response. I thought at first that I’d come too late, but when I went around back, I saw his car still in its shed, so I returned to the veranda and sat down on the top step.

From where I sat, I could look at an easterly angle and see the timber growing west of our lodge across the lake. Swinging my eyes a little farther east, I saw more trees, but they were thicker and closer and growing on a kind of little peninsula that jutted out into the water from the end of the lake. I got up and went down to the west end of the veranda, where the angle of vision was sharper, but I still couldn’t see anything but the heavy growth of scrub trees on the little peninsula. I went back to the top step and sat down again.

Except for the soft sighing of the trees, there was no sound. Under the pale sun, the lake was quiet. My mind was quiet with the quiet that comes when things are accepted.

Down by the lake, beyond the trees, there was suddenly the faint sound of whistling. The whistling grew louder as it came nearer through the trees, and pretty soon Evan Lane appeared on the slope, dressed in a bright plaid shirt, open at the throat, and corduroy trousers. When he saw me sitting on the step, the whistling broke for a moment and then resumed.

A few steps from the veranda, Lane pulled up, saying, “Well. Mr. Wren. Your neighborliness is appreciated, but it comes a little late. I’m returning to town tonight.”

“I know,” I said. “Cindy’s home packing.”

“Yes? I still have mine to do. I know you’ll understand.”

“Sure. I’ll only stay a minute. I was just sitting here admiring your view. You could improve it, you know, by having the trees cut off that little peninsula. If you had the trees cut down, you could see our place across the lake. You could even see the beach and the raft .”

He turned slowly to follow the direction of my gazer and when he turned back, his eyes were alive with that swimming, cynical amusement I had seen in the Inn’s barroom.

“Oh, yes. I did say I spotted you from the veranda, didn’t I? But, of course, it no longer matters.”

“Sure,” I said. “It no longer matters. As far as you’re concerned, nothing will ever matter again.”

I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him, and then I saw what I’d been living to see. I saw the smooth assurance go sick in his eyes and fear come flooding in. When I’d seen that, I’d had everything from him I’d ever want, so I shot him. I shot him where I hated him most. Right in his pretty face. The bullet struck him just under the nose, and he went down like an empty sack.

I sat there a little longer, looking with a kind of cold detachment at the crumpled body, and then I got up and went back down the slope and around the end of the lake. By the time I got back to our side and the beach, the afternoon was almost gone. Crossing the beach toward the timber in front of the lodge, I thought for a moment that I saw Grandfather’s bright towel lying on the sand where he’d dropped it over two months ago, but of course the towel wasn’t really there at all.

I went up through the timber and into the lodge, and Cindy was in the living room with a glass in her hand. She was still wearing the brown velvet pajamas, and when I looked at her, there was still in my heart, in spite of everything, the pain of my love and the sadness of a great loss.

“It’s late, Tony. You’ve been gone a long time.”

“I went around to the other side of the lake,” I said. “I called on Evan Lane.”

The glass moved sharply in her hand. “Why, Tony? Why?”

“He wasn’t home when I got there,” I said, “and I sat on the veranda until he came. I learned something while I was sitting there, honey. I learned that you can’t see our beach or the raft at all from his place. He never used a telescope, as he said he did. He never saw me drown the old man. I kept trying to think how he could have known, and the only thing I could think was that you told him.”

I waited a few seconds, and she tried to speak, but no sound could pass through her constricted throat. After a while, I went on talking in a quiet kind of way with no anger in my voice, because there was really no anger in me.